I really wish I could steer or turbo in one direction and shoot behind me at once. That way, when you're in an Atlas and being chased by a Tri-Flare Valk, you at least stand a ghost of a chance of escape.
It would be hard to implement the control system, but having a turbo-lock button while you turn around and shoot would be nice. As it stands, it a Valk gets behind a trade ship, it's screwed.

turn around and use gemini,

They cant avoid it :D

and they will get a fear

next thing before they know it, fire another, turn around and start running again to the nearest wormhole/station, when they near you again (400-300m) turn, and think about losing a gemini. Think about it, you have more hitpoints then them :D, and 2 times a couple of gemini, I can tell you those hurt :D

/me whistles innocently :D

cheers

Geminis are next to useless now. The tracking still needs to be improved slightly. And I think the proximity of it is screwed up also. While it supposedly inflicts high damage, 99.9% of the time the missile just barely scrapes the target, causing only a tiny fraction of that damage. If they're gonna be as weak as they are now, the ammo count should be upped... or they could just improve the tracking and proximity blast.

Use physics mode and turn around - you'll continue in the direction you were facing an can shoot in the opposite direction :)

Regards,
Ma "arcade mode sucks" rk (Commander Jameson)

I use arcade mode 99% of the time, the 1% i don't is when i am fighting =)

geminis hit about 1/6 so... yeah... and physics you can't boost, mines are the only weapons that actually fire "backwards" (well not really).
and renegade, if you're facing a skilled pirate, he'll take 3 pairs of geminis in trade for 12 pairs of tri sunflares.

Well, I'm not saying these should be added to the Atlas or any other existing ship, but I think that ships not much bigger than we have now should have an AI tail gunner in a hemispherical turret that you can switch on and which will fire at whatever is chasing you. An AI gunner with a Gatling or Plasma Cannon unloading on you would definately make it harder to chase someone. Imagine attacking two or three merchants in a convoy, each of which opens up with a rear firing turreted gatling and starts dropping lightning mines. Makes life more interesting for everyone I think.

How about a large port weapon specifically for an auto-trgetting tailgunner?

My problem with physics mode is that you can't boost and shoot behind you. You'll be going at 55mps while the valk pirate is turboing at 160 or something.

Well, specifically, I'm suggesting that turrets ought to be able to fire while you are boosting to help solve that exact problem - but as you can probably readily imagine, on ships as small and agile as we have now that is probably too powerful. On a ship that seems sluggish even when boosting, and has 4 or more times the cross sectional area of a fighter it goes from being abusable to being a necessity.

the kid, but you can dodge those with a marauder

I at least was able to dodge them from uncle and grim :D

and uncle did die because of it, you could say that it was the surprise and that he wouldnt expect his valk getting shot from upclose. But the main advantage is that you cant rocketram and still are able to hit them when they come upclose ;). And a rocket is only irritating for a short time, while a gemini keeps beeping, and that is enerving :D.

Especially when you have 4 loads of tripple gemini fired on the person :D

He will be busy for a short while :D, and you have time to run to the nearest station / warphole and go to the station to dock and to get a warship and hunt the pirate :D

It is all about delaying him and at the same time not getting killed.

I haven't known Gemini's to distract anyone for that long. And even if they did, part of the focus on my tailgunning idea was that missiles like sunflares should be destructible with energy weapons so Geminis would be useless. And you can't always dodge with a marauder either. It gets tough when you have 27 flares unleashed in every conceivable direction you could go.

I've been a long-time supporter of rear-firing weapons. Ever since 3.2 when I thought "rear port" meant just that. :-(

I suggest adding a "real" rear port to certain ships, and creating a new breed of "R" weapons that are similar in strength to S-weapons but more balanced towards tail-gunning.

Example (and these are JUST examples, don't flame for them being half-a**ed):
R-homer: wider prox, half the damage, slower speed, much lower rate of fire.
R-gattling: shortened maximum range, very fast fire rate, no auto-aim, wide weapon "spread", less damage.
R-laser: shortened maximum range, excellent auto-aim, medium damage, slow fire rate.

Also: All of the "small mines" suggestions (from another thread) should be R-slot weapons.

Me votes for rear weapons